Forlong - Rivers of Life

264
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
of Arjoona, the third Pandava prince, “whose martial bands, under the name of
Vaijayan (Aigaian) . . . . settled. on, and gave a name to the .Egean Sea; on whose
north was the gulf of Therma (Dherma) . . . another name for Arjoona. . .. Delbhi
or Arjoona was. the bosom friend of Krishna,” says Pococke (I. in G. 291); but I must
pass on and speak somewhat in detail of the very important Naga-Poota, or Boodha, of
the Serpent race, which guarded the rocky cleft and dwelt in the fountain; and whose
principal part was the golden-headed Tri-soola or Fleur-de-Iis, found whose shaft
wound three serpents.
A triple serpent column, say all writers, was set up in the Kas-talian or holy
spring, and a seat was there for the Pontifex Maxima; for a woman had to sit here,
else the god spoke not. Now because some coins, sacrificial tripods, and many writings
speak of these, and of “the Tripod of Delphi,” on or from which the priestess gave the
responses of the Deity; it has, been concluded by European writers that these were one
and the same, and hence they show, as Mr. Jas. Yates does in his artic1e on Tripos in
Smith’s Greek and Roman Antiquities, an. elaborate tripod with a basin, having
circular supports over it to carry a seat, on which it was supposed the priestess sat.
This may very probably have been part of the furniture of the Delphic temple, as
temples require and usually contain many similar rude tables for the flowers and gifts
of visitors, but a three-legged table is not my idea at all of the Pythic Tripod. All
who know Indian Sivaik shrines will remember the common little rude tables which
stand about in them; and no doubt these became in Delphi’s later days more elaborate
and carried a sacrificial bowl or cup like our Church fonts; but these three-legged
articles have no connection in my mind with the tripod of the god. He himself is a
tripod, but he is also that on which we have seen the bird sitting; and his emblematic
tripod is known as his Tri-Soola, a most potent and important article.
It is the trefoil-lingam with which he strikes the yielding “earth-co,” and
which brings water from the rock; it may or may not have serpents twisted on or
about it, like Mercury’s Kaduceus, or the rod of Eskulapius. The whole tri-lingam in
the Hippodrome of Constantinople is formed of serpents; and the column is, as I here
show in Fig. 126, situated in a pit. I give in Fig 127 an actual landscape of the Hippodrome
as drawn by myself many years ago when at Constantinople; but here in Fig. 126,
I wish to present my readers with the three religious ideas of the spot. Thus on the left
we see the symbol of a pure phallic faith—that which preceded the Serpent; while on
its right we see neither Serpent nor Phallic ideas forgotten in the Temple of this later
“People of the Book;” for in the ever-recurring domes, or globular forms of mosks, we
have the Omphe and Solar ideas; and in the minarets which correspond to the Jewish,
Boodhist, and Christian candles, we have the still repeated idea of the Obelisk; in
all, we have Ophis or Python, and Apollo, the Sun, Serpent, and Sun-stone, whether
called Mahā-Deva, or Pārvati, of which Omphe more hereafter. The Tripods of Apollo
and Bacchus, and that consecrated to the muses, were certainly not “tables” if I